SibSab 2026 – A Rocky Start in Pittsburgh

For quite some time now, I have been wanting to visit Fallingwater, undoubtedly one of Frank Llyod Wright’s most famous homes.  I have wanted to go see it so badly that I even framed a miniature photo of that iconic view of the house and placed it in the bathroom of my Craftsman style doll house (pictured above).  When I mentioned that I wanted to go to Fallingwater to my brother who had been there before, he said it was not far from Pittsburgh which he thought would be a great destination for one of our SibSabs (Sibling Sabbaticals).  We tried to plan it in 2025 but due to several scheduling conflicts, had to put it off to 2026.  However, the stars aligned for us to pull it off in 2026.  But it got off to a bit of a rocky start, no doubt due to some unexpected astronomical causes.

Our plan was for our brother to drive over from his home near Philadelphia and pick up the three of us at the Pittsburgh airport to kick off the beginning of our SibSab.  With my sisters flying in from Northwest Arkansas and me flying in from Memphis, we had arranged our flights such that we all would arrive about 12:30 pm on the first Wednesday in June.  Unfortunately, their flight out of Northwest Arkansas was delayed such that they could not make their connection, ironically in Philadelphia.  Their airline rebooked their connecting flight, but it would not get into Pittsburgh until 4:30, about four hours late.

My brother picked me up after my flight got in and we took advantage of the time for the two of us to eat lunch together and have a couple of beers at a pub not too far from the airport.  When we picked up our sisters at the airport, we encountered our second set back.  We learned that our sister’s phone had died during the day and she could not resurrect it (fortunately this got resolved about 48 hours later).

After we had checked into our rental home, we went out for dinner at a delicious seafood restaurant for our first 2026 SibSab meal together.

The next morning, we encountered our third stumbling block—the coffee maker would not work.  For this group of senior citizens, coffee as soon as we wake up in the morning is as essential as taking a breath.  To see if I had done something wrong, I had even watched the video the host provided on how to work the coffee maker but to no avail.  I tried unsuccessfully to make some French Press but without other options, we went out to breakfast in the Strip district at a highly recommended diner for some much-needed caffeine.  Throughout the first day, I corresponded back and forth with the host who ultimately replaced the coffee maker while we were gone (and the new one worked great).  But little did we know that encountering coffee challenges was minor in comparison to the other woes we would experience on our trip.

So, sufficiently caffeinated we could begin our SibSab in earnest.

Our first stop after breakfast was at the Duquesne Incline.  Unless you have visited Pittsburgh before, you would not have known that the city is laid out onto a series of steep hills and valleys.  Most of the steel mills were down in the valleys so to escape the heat and smoke from the plants, the steel workers mostly lived on the tops of the hills.  At first, a series of stairways were built to allow the workers to “commute” between work and home but eventually 24 incline railways (funicular trains) were built. Today only two remain with the Duquesne, which opened in 1877, being one of the oldest in the country.

From the top of Mount Washington, you get a wonderful panoramic view of the city and the “Golden Triangle” where the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River join to form the Ohio River.

Our next destination was to the Carnegie Museum of Art in downtown where there was a special installation of their 59^th International exhibition showing.  The museum was overwhelming and we could not even take it all in.  Highlights for me were to get to see a Van Gogh painting I had never seen before…

… and I even found a miniature display.

Our last stop for the day was to visit the Cathedral of Learning, the 42-story skyscraper that is the centerpiece of the Universality of Pittsburgh just a short walk from the Carnegie Museum.

The purpose of our visit was to view the Nationality Rooms housed on the first and third floors of the building.  There are a total of 31 rooms and each features a society and culture from a different country.  The rooms are used as classrooms on a regular basis but are available for view when not in use.  I cannot recall how many we saw in our time there, but to me the Austrian room was particularly beautiful.

That night, we ate at a great pizza restaurant my brother had been to before, but we devoured the delicious pizza before anyone thought to take a picture of it.

On Friday morning, we went to the Frick Pittsburgh Museum & Gardens.  I had never heard of the Frick but by the end of the tour, I knew a tremendous amount about Henry Clay Frick, his family, his career, and his Gilded Age home, Clayton, which was the center of the tour.  Frick, who had a humble beginning, became a Neuvo riche millionaire by the age of 30 through his company that produced coke, a purified, carbon rich fuel derived from coal which is critical in making steel.  It was no doubt inevitable that he would join forces with Andrew Carneige in the making of steel.  But that business partnership took a devastating turn in 1892 with the Homestead Strike when Carnegie basically threw Frick “under the bus” for the violence that erupted.  Later, Carnegie made efforts to try to restore their partnership to which Frick vehemently refused famously saying I will “Meet you in Hell.”

They did not allow photos inside the home, so I have none to share but my brother did photograph a postcard of Mrs. Frick’s room to give you an idea of the interior.

On the grounds was also an interesting museum of carriages and cars owned by the Frick family as well as a small art museum (their largest art collection residing in New York).

In the afternoon, we went to a huge art store my sister wanted to go to before making our way over to the Hofbrauhaus restaurant where we indulged ourselves in some delicious German food while being serenaded with traditional Bavarian music by an accordion player.

    To be continued…